Cursecraft
by Empty Boundaries
Summary: The embodiment of All The Evil in The World arrives in Gensokyou...
1. Flower

It began as usual for her, tending to the flowers. Nearing autumn, some of the fairies and youkai were preparing for hibernation. It was quieter, just her, the flowers, the warmth of the setting sun and the cool wind that swelled and ebbed in a lethargic fashion.

The peace pervading Yuuka's day was irrevocably shattered in a burst of prismatic light. From the glow, a man was ejected, unceremoniously crumpling to the ground. She would have believed it was just another Outsider gapped in my Yukari if it weren't for the light show accompanying it. At first, it looked like an unremarkable man ... save for the crimson glyphs that covered every exposed inch of his flesh. As it got up, its eyes opened.

Malicious cunning, bloodlust, and rampant sadism mixed with a wild unthinking madness. That was all that was reflected from these eyes. They resembled Yuuka's own when she was displeased.

A dark, roiling power erupted and covered the figure in a shroud of shadow, like a black armour of black flames and smoke.

Yuuka didn't like the colour black. It was the colour of wilted flowers rotting away.

But what aggravated her the most was the fact that it had landed upon several sunflowers, its noxious aura reducing them and the surrounding ground, to black ooze. In that instant, Yuuka Kazami, Youkai of Flowers and mistress of the Garden of the Sun, decided then and there to beat the strange thing to within an inch of its life.

Lifting her parasol, she cast her signature spell.

" **「Master Spark 」!** "

Power born from uncountable millennia of existence flowed down The Flower that Never Wilts concentrating into an iridescent beam that was as wide as a truck. A blast of that size and power rivalled Marisa Kirisame's Final Spark. It spelt utter annihilation for anyone unfortunate enough to be its target, incinerating their body at the atomic level. The miko and her magician friend she could humour with a danmaku battle. This thing does not deserve such consideration.

As the Master spark bore down upon the creature, it roared. Imagine a man's scream of hatred, an embodiment of his fury against the world and everything that was, is and would be in it. Imagine a beast with an everlasting hunger that can never be sated. Add that with an edge, no a massive dose of insanity and you are close to what that roar sounded like.

" █████ **!"**

It lifted what appeared to be its right arm and made a cutting motion. And a vast swathe of concentrated **curses** , powerful enough to attain physical form, met Yuuka's beam. The evil of Man, taking the form of a wave of shadow, met the unstoppable might of nature. The legend of Angra Mainyu, the Zoroastrian embodiment of All The Evil in The World was ancient. Yet the being known as Yuuka Kazami had existed long before humanity even developed the capacity for speech, before she took on her current form. In a world where age was power, she could be considered **The Strongest** in this Land of Illusions.

The Master Spark pierced the wave of darkness, burning it away into nothingness. But Avenger was gone, having changed its position in the small amount of time it took for the beam to reach its position.

"Annoying." Normally Yuuka liked a good fight, but this attacking travesty bore her no enjoyment. The antipathy she felt for it was almost equal to what she felt for Rumia, before she got that ribbon slapped on her…

Avenger had rushed at her, producing two daggers that were cloaked in the same curses that cloaked it. They were a pair of jagged things, twisted like the fangs of some beast, serrated and designed to inflict as much pain as possible. **Tawrich and Zarich** _: The fang grinders._ Yuuka countered with her parasol, the seemingly soft fabric actually having the consistency of the strongest steel. Avenger was faster, running around its opponent and attacking from all angles, yet Yuuka's strength far exceeded its own. The missed hits from the parasol would crush the earth, or rend great scars simply from the air pressure created by her strikes.

Avenger style of fighting was, to put it simply, insane. His attacks were like he was about to throw his swords, mad strikes that overwhelm the opponent with sheer numbers instead of power. It was Avenger's speciality, if insanity can be called speciality. Countless strikes, again and again, coming from all the sides of Yuuka as Avenger ran around him in a pattern that made no sense.

Madness was his weapon.

Calling Avenger slow, even by Servant standards, would have been a lie. He constantly changed his position, his feet were nothing more than a blur, and there simply was no pause between his attacks. A frenzied attack style that gains more and more speed, even though it would have been enough a long time ago.

He does not battle. He does not fight. He murders. Slaughters.

" █████ **!"**

But if even one of Yuuka's strikes lands fully on him, it would tear his body apart. While that would be hardly enough to stop him, it would give Yuuka time to vaporise his body with a Master Spark. Indeed, Yuuka Kazami is simply too monstrous opponent for even a beast like Avenger to defeat.

Howling, Avenger channelled the strongest curse it possessed into his daggers.

 **DEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATHDEATH**

Yuuka merely laughed. "You really believe you can defeat me with that, little curse?"

But when Yuuka's parasol was parried by Tawrich, the curse loaded within managed to cut through. And The Flower That never Wilts knew death.

Yuuka's expression darkened to become downright murderous as she glanced at her broken parasol. She was done playing around.

Elementals, as extensions of Gaia, were able to materialise natural phenomena without any incurred costs in prana. They were the earth and the earth was them. This ability was given the name 'Marble Phantasm' by magi, where it was likened to increasing the chances of finding a white marble inside a jar of both black and white to 100%.

Yuuka materialised her will on the world ... and a vacuum was created where Avenger stood, ripping him apart. Curse stained flesh simply drew themselves back together, so Yuuka summoned a titan slaying bolt of lightening to rip into Avenger's form. Plasma struggled to burn through darkstuff that could withstand the killing heat of a star. It blasted him across the landscape, then beyond the horizon in the direction of the Hakurei Shrine.


	2. Gap

Crack!

The cup shattered in Yukari's hand, tea streaming down her fingers, Shock and indignation rose up in Reimu.

"Hey, you're paying fo-" The words were locked tight in her throat as an oppressive aura surged from the Youkai Sage 's form.

"Reimu, tell everyone to evacuate, then bring Kagiyama Hina when the battle is over."

That scared Reimu more than anything, that _something_ was threatening enough for Yukari to take seriously. She grabbed her gohei and flew off to alert Suika while Ran and Chen had stood up, awaiting orders from their mistress.

"Set up the strongest bounded field you can around the area. If _it_ manages to evade me, get Yuyuko. She'll understand what to do."

Used to Yukari's manner of debriefing, they carried out her orders without complaint.

"I swear if that old vampire is behind this ... no even he doesn't have such a sick sense of humour to send _that_ to Gensokyou."

With a single step, she walked through a gap to the top of the torii gate in front of the shrine to await the arrival of Angra Mainyu. It didn't take long. A building-sized ball of dark fire strikes the stairs leading to the shrine, lifting up a large shockwave that launched pulverised rock as an expanding cloud around the point of impact. Swiping her hand, Yukari summoned a gust of wind that blew away the potential cover for it to use.

 **PAINPAINPAINPAINKILLDESCRATEMASSACRESLAUGHTERMURDER-**

"I see, then there's no avoiding this."

In a fraction of a second, hundreds of inch-sized tendrils of dark energy bursts out of the crater, lunging for Yukari, only to have a gap appear amidst them and shut, severing them no hesitation, she opened another gap and shoved her hand inside, pulled and _squeezed_.

What appeared to a black simulacrum of a heart, a foul mockery of the organ composed of curses instead of flesh, exploded in her hand. Touching it felt like hell, that foulness like filth, like searing heat and frostbite. But she suffered worse than that and managed.

What transpired was not the activation of a curse which, like Zabaniya: Delusional Heartbeat destroys a facsimile of the target's heart in order to crush the original, nor was it the reversal of cause and effect as inflicted by the curse of Gae Bolg, but something entirely different.

For the youkai of boundaries, distance is an illusion. She opened a gap that reduced the intervening space between her hand and Avenger's 'heart' to zero, though to call it a heart was incorrect. What it pumped was not lifeblood, but an endless stream of curses everlasting.

The corrosive nature of the black miasma immediately started to break down her hand, so she burned it in a prana-devouring flame. Usually, the loss of the heart was enough to severely incapacitate most things, from dragons to lower-tier nature spirits. While those with regenerative capabilities, such as Dead Apostles can repair the damage, it still cost them time and effort.

However, Avenger had ceased to become limited by the restrictions of conventional biology. He had become less of an individual and more of an ideal... which is why Yukari launched a focused beam of light that obliterated his head. Of course, even that wasn't enough, the damage undone in seconds. With a wild roar, Avenger threw himself out of the crater, orbs of condensed curses shooting at his foe.

If destroying his internal organs isn't enough to incapacitate him, perhaps physical force would. More gaps appeared, the eyes glaring at Avenger from the void. With multiple loud booms, the carriages of trains shot out, launched at mach speeds like the projectiles of a railgun. They slammed into Avenger in succession, creating a cage of partially molten metal, though it was dissolving at a ludicrous rate under the influence of his mantle of curses. But it brought her enough time t-

 **"VeRG aVEsTa!"**

Pain ripped across her form as she felt the agony of having her body pulverised to a mush. She vaguely wondered why she even bothered to engage nociception during battle.

In her moment of distraction, Avenger materialised a tidal wave of curses that covered Yukari, as well as the Hakurei Shrine and the alot of the forest behind it in an instant. Millions of thaums of prana coursed through the sea of darkness, granting it the strength to consume or corrupt anything within its grip-

-only for it to be stripped away in an instant, swallowed by a gap that led to the vacuum of space. Another tear in space-time opened above him, a pillar of light bursting out and threatening to incinerate his very essence. A black orb formed around the figure of Avenger, the darkness of humanity smothering the light of the sun.

 **" _Tch, to be able to destroy my physical existence..."_**

Any flesh, hair, bone and clothing had been corroded away by the sea of curses. Now, there was what can only be described as a hole in the World shaped like Yukari Yakumo. It was nothing but that eye-filled abyss, the true essence of her being.

Gaps appeared around Avenger's limbs, opening and shutting nigh instantaneously; and neating severing each limb. The sight of Avenger being reduced to a head and a torso was delightful to the Youkai Sage, the eyes within her shifting in glee.

" ** _Let's see if Yasaka's boasts about the Gojuu Seidan(_**五重星団) ** _are warranted."_**

Four gaps appeared, encircling Avenger's struggling figure as a daito shot out from each; every one of them were of unyielding blade and peerless artifice. Yukari drew her arm out of another, pulling out a fifth.

The handguard – made of metal, forged in the form of five intertwined snakes coiled around the hilt which is covered with criss-crossing strips of dark red material, terminating at a metal cap – made of the same bronze-like metal as the handguard – on the very end of the most striking feature was its blade, forged of a crimson metal that by all rights should not exist. Understandable, as it was forged by an oni. Its other four sisters were identical to it in every respect.

Two swords skewered the shoulder joints, while another two pierced the thighs. The last, Fukou, was in Yukari's hands. With a thrust, it pierced Avenger's heart.

Due to the circumstances of their forging, each sword possessed an Origami-type plundering faculty, which means that they can strip away Life-force, or Od, from any living being they come into contact with. Even Avenger's corrupted Od was manageable, being drained away hampered his regeneration. As he roared and struggled to lift the five swords pinning him to the ground, Yukari let out a sigh of relief and begin the task of reconstructing her physical body as she awaited Reimu's return.

* * *

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AN: Scary Yukari is scary. Also _HER BODY IS MADE OF GAPS_

Jokes aside, there's a slight Tsukihime reference here, as well as some to Yukari's infamous Hisōtensoku spellcard, _Abandoned Line: Aimless Journey to the Abandoned Station_ , where she summons trains from her gaps. The history of the Gojuu Seidan( **Fivefold Star Cluster** ) will be elaborated upon; especially their connection with Kanako. Avenger will regain his sanity in the next chapter.

Also, for those who don't know, Hina Kagiyama is a curse goddess who possesses the ability to store and manage misfortune and 'impurity' within herself, stockpiling it into the surrounding environment.


	3. Drain

Some gods aren't chained to what they are. Some can go conquer, gain new powers. But for Kagiyama Hina, she had to collect curses. It doesn't matter what she did, for she is a curse goddess, so curses follow her. So, she decided that she might as well enjoy life and help people.

So when a frantic looking Reimu appeared and asked her for help, she immediately agreed and went with her.

"Are you sure it's some kind of super curse?"

The Hakurei miko, who was flying in front of her, turned her head. "Yeah, but it felt like a whole bunch of lesser curses stuck together. At least _thousands_ of them. Enough to give whatever that thing physical form."

That was extremely worrying, especially if the gap youkai had to personally intervene.

As they flew closer to the shrine-

"It's gone?"

Along with most of the forest behind it, apparently.

Standing in the ruins were two figures.

One was what could only be described as a boundary, shifting and reflecting its concepts infinitely within itself. Something that was both _here_ , yet not. It hurt Hina's eyes to look at what she presumed was Yakumo Yukari.

The other pinned to the ground was a contorting, black mass of curses bent into the vague shape of a limbless man. She could feel its reek even from afar. Thousands of thousands of years worth of impurity. Even she wouldn't be able to drain away all of it.

The youkai sage looked up as they flew down, lifting what passed as a hand and muttered a short syllable.

The universe hiccuped, and Reimu's adopted a look of confusion, before changing into relief. The shrine was suddenly intact, the forest unleveled, the steps undamaged.

"Yakumo-san, what happened here?"

In response, a skeleton was drawn around the gap, then flesh began to grow over it. Finally, a purple tabard and a white dress materialised and Yukari was more or less back to her usual self.

Flexing her hands experimentally, Yukari sighed.

"I'll explain everything once everyone is here."

As if in response to her words, a flash of green flashed across the sky before dropping to the ground. Hina gulped slightly when Yuuka twisted her face into a grin, one that was sharp and jagged, the kind used to tear flesh, when she spotted the cursed thing.

"Well, looks like time hasn't taken your edge entirely, Yakumo." With that, she pointed her parasol at the thing, and the harsh light of a Master Spark began to gather at the tip.

"Wait, don't you want some answers first before you blow the guy up?" Reimu asked.

"The Haukrei miko has a point; I too would like to know what this... abomination is doing here." The wind blew around the assembled women, solidifying into the familiar shape of Yasaka Kanako.

The goddess smirked and gestured at the swords pinning Avenger to the ground. "Since you borrowed my blades tha-"

"Yes, and you still owe one favour to me. Hina, if you would be so kind." Yukari gestured to the struggling figure on the ground.

As the three continued to argue, Hina approached the mass of curses.

The black mass pulsed as she drew near, rippling to form faces old and young, human and not, beautiful and monstrous. They writhed around one another, eyes, claws and fangs appearing and disappearing with nauseating frequency.

Undeterred, Hina took a deep breath and _spun_.

Se could feel it all as they were drawn into her.

 **Anger, murder, rape from love, rape from hate, stealing, lying, arson, suicide, oppression, slaughter, hate, cruelty, ignorance, obsession, crime, revenge, injustice, wrath, sloth, greed...**

The list was unending, infinite, endless, countless.

Unlimited.

And it felt _so good_.

The curses continued to flow into her unceasingly as the ground started collapsing beneath her feet.

The dark gunk was stripped away, revealing a young, dark-haired man. Nameless, bearing with it the collective sins of a village that had expanded over time to include a tribe, a nation, a continent, a world. Across his skin slid the patterns of curses and death, disease, war and famine, all the evils of the world, cringing in the light.

Hina forced herself to pull away, even though part of her wanted to drain him dry.

A pair of yellow eyes stared back at her.

"Who the hell are you?"


End file.
